Sierra Dickey

Sierra Dickey is a writer, educator, and organizer. She holds a BA in Environmental Humanities from Whitman College, and a Master of Education specializing in collaborative media education from Antioch University. 

Sierra comes to UMASS from the Northfield Mount Hermon School, where she taught English and led the development of campus-wide journalism programming. While there, Sierra also worked on special events with the Dean of Faculty, facilitating two all-school conversations with guests such as Winona LaDuke, David Ragland, and Karla Cornjeo Villavicencio. In 2021, Sierra created the Visiting Journalists Series, bringing working journalists to speak on campus once per semester. Speakers she worked with included Wesley Lowery, Suzy Exposito, Alice Driver, and Neesha Powell-Ingabire. 

Sierra began her career in education supporting Mexican and Guatemalan migrant agricultural workers through the Vermont and Maine Migrant Education Programs. In Vermont, she developed novel workplace ESOL curricula for dairy workers that privileged their experiences as undocumented people. In 2019, Sierra spent time reporting from Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacán, Mexico on the social costs of participating in the H2A visa program for the lake’s indigenous Purepécha residents. Agricultural labor, food justice, and prison abolition, are Sierra’s major organizing and reporting interests. A longtime freelancer for the local outlet The Shoestring, Sierra has reported on police, prisons, immigration, and political art across Western Massachusetts.